SUNNYVALE -- Aerohive Networks found enough enthusiasm for its mobile-focused networking offering to generate $75 million in an initial public offering, but the company didn't seem to generate enough buzz for a big pop in its Wall Street debut Friday.

Aerohive sold 7.5 million shares for $10 apiece, the company announced Thursday evening, establishing an initial valuation of $436 million. Upon reaching the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Friday morning under the ticker symbol HIVE, shares struggled to hit the IPO price, dipping as low as $8.81 before clawing back to close at $9.99 as CEO David Flynn and other employees rang the closing bell.

"It's a huge accomplishment," Flynn said in a telephone interview Friday morning. "We've had a ton of people driving hard for a year getting all the financials ready, and a ton of people driving hard for eight years building the company to get to this stage, so it's certainly an exciting milestone."

Aerohive's networking offering seeks to provide cloud management and remote access through a variety of devices while allowing businesses to maintain strong control, hitting the major tech buzzwords of late on Wall Street, "cloud" and "mobile." Aerohive competes with yet another Sunnyvale networking company, Aruba Networks, as well as San Jose networking giant Cisco Systems in the enterprise WLAN market for large businesses.

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Flynn and founder Changming Liu, who is now chief technology officer, helped lead firewall company NetScreen Technologies to a huge 2001 IPO and eventual $4 billion acquisition by another Sunnyvale networking company, Juniper Networks, in 2004. The security background for Flynn -- who was also involved with firewall company Palo Alto Networks -- and Liu brought "deep security expertise over to the wireless world, which is a very significant part of what we deliver," Flynn said.

"One of the secret sauces of our architecture is the ability for access points to talk to each other and synchronize their state, to allow users to roam around and actually allow firewall sessions to move around," Flynn explained.

Since being founded in 2006, Aerohive has grown to service 13,100 customers as of the end of last year, boosting revenues from $34 million in 2011 to $107.1 million in 2013, while losses grew from $14.8 million to $33.2 million. Flynn said that investors want to see the company derive a bigger percentage of its revenues from selling software-as-a-service applications for mobile devices and other uses, and that will be a focus as the company moves toward profitability.

The proceeds from the stock sale will go toward general purposes, with Flynn saying, "The cash is more there for rainy-day protection, to make sure we're well-funded for any unforeseen economic downturns or other unexpected events."

However, one need for the company is a new headquarters, with employees scattered across three different sites in Sunnyvale, all within a block of each other. Flynn said that he doubts the company will leave Sunnyvale, which is home to a wealth of networking companies.

"I have spent 22 years of my life working in the networking security industry and never been more than three miles from where I am." Chief Marketing Officer David Greene noted. "Different companies, different locations, different moves, but I think there's some magnetic force that attracts us all to that neighborhood."

Aerohive will take in all the IPO proceeds, with venture capital investors -- which include Northern Light Venture Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, New Enterprise Associates, KPCB and DAG Ventures -- holding on to their stakes for now. Underwriters, led by Goldman Sachs and BofA Merrill Lynch, have access to an additional 1.125 million shares if desired.